Istanbul to host huge Dali exhibit

The show -- from September 19 until January 19 -- will be the largest ever mounted by the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation outside its base in the artists Catalan hometown, with 33 oil paintings, 113 sketches and 123 graphics.

"Here in Istanbul, we wish to be able to bring the spirit of such a msueum, so that everyone can understand and get a closer look at Dalis thinking, his obsessions, his iconography," curator Montse Aguer said.

The foundation was set up in 1983 by the artist himself. It owns 4,000 of his works -- the largest such collection in the world. "I think this is the kind of exhibition that can change the way someone looks at art. I think it will bring us closer to modern art, which almost passed us by," said Nazan Olcer, a director of the Turkish museum.

The Sakip Sabanci Museum opened in Istanbul in 2002 in a former Ottoman mansion on the west bank of the Bosphorus with the ambition of giving the city and Turkey a gallery of truly international standing. In 2005 and 2006 a similar exhibition of works by another Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso, broke all records for a Turkish gallery, attracting a quarter-of-a-million art lovers.

Dali was born in the Catalan town of Figueres in 1904 and died there in 1989. He was an extraordinary artist and self-publicist, becoming the most famous proponent of surrealism in painting, sculpture and photography.